He had been absent from the huts for nearly half an hour, but we found the three blacks still in a state of the most abject fear. They started with dread even at our approach; and, what surprised me much, Peel seemed even more panic-stricken than his younger companions. His eyes rolled, his teeth chattered, and every now and then he would shiver convulsively. When I had first seen him he was dressed in jacket and trousers, but now he was in his aboriginal costume, an opossum-skin cloak wrapped round his otherwise perfectly naked form. He was squatting on his heels by the fire, but with his face towards the door. The superintendent was a tall, powerful man, and a formidable antagonist to face. He stood in the centre of the hut (which, as I have explained, happened to be clear, the table having been placed against the partition), and looked sternly down on the three crouching, shivering figures beneath him. He had purposely left the gun we had found in the kitchen, telling the hut-keeper and his wife not to come near, whatever they might hear. In his hand he held a pistol, while I stood with another in my belt, and my gun in my hand, ready for action. We had provided ourselves also with a stout piece of cord, which I had ready to give to him when he should ask for it.
For nearly a minute Stevenson thus stood and looked at them in silence. I observed that, after the first glance at him, the two boys stared round the hut and hung their heads without looking at him again. Not so Peel. As his eyes met the superintendent's I noticed that they became fixed. The pupils, before dilated, suddenly contracted; the lids, previously wide open, half closed, and a spasm seemed to pass over him. His head sank lower in the folds of his rug, but never for an instant did he remove his glance from Stevenson's face. He saw something there which made him suspect that his villainy was known, and that he had run into a trap; and the second danger counteracted the panic caused by the first.
'Bobby Peel,' said Stevenson, 'where gun belongin' to white fellow you kill?'
At this question the two youngest absolutely grovelled in the ashes, and seemed to give themselves up for lost. Peel did not answer, but drew his cloak over his head, and gathered himself together beneath it, as if he had resigned himself to his fate.
'Give me the rope, doctor,' said the superintendent, turning his face towards me.
It was but for a moment that he did so, but that moment was enough for the wary and agile black, who from beneath his covering had still watched every movement. Dropping his cloak, with one bound he sprang from his heels and shot himself forward against his antagonist, who was about five or six feet from him. His hands, held out at full length, caught the superintendent in the chest, and sent him reeling the whole length of the hut, until he came crash against the table, which was covered with dishes and plates, and fell heavily in the corner. Not hesitating an instant, the now naked black rushed to the door. I stepped back outside and raised the gun, but he paid no attention to my threat and order to stop, and slipped out and made off.
'Shoot him, doctor!' roared Stevenson in a towering rage, and for some time I had him covered, but somehow I could not pull the trigger; I felt a repugnance, guilty as he might be, at the thought of being his executioner.
I still had the gun pointed at the fugitive, who was fast disappearing in the gloom, when a shout arose from the superintendent, who had just risen from the ground in time to seize Pothook, who had decided—five seconds too late, however—upon following Peel's example. I barred the door, and the two were ordered to resume their places on each side of the fire.
'We have got these two fellows safe enough, doctor. Do you know they have been killing white men all about the run? Why did you not shoot Peel? I told you to fire.'
'But have they been killing white men?' I asked.
'Plenty. I heard of it to-day over at the Wakool—Peel, Pothook, little Toby, and Jumboy.'
In a low tone, as if for me, but taking care the two boys should hear us, we discussed what we should do.
The two hoys listened to us in silent terror. They knew, unhappily, only too well, from past experience, how little valued black lives were by the majority of the white men. With no provocation whatever, and in the mere wantonness of the power to slay, they had often been slaughtered by the settlers. But now, conscious that they were privy to many murders of the whites, and that a justification for their death existed,—kind and just as they knew Stevenson to be in general,—they believed that their hour was come. Their fear grew every moment stronger while we talked, and, as they thought, took counsel together how best to dispose of them. The end of it was that, only too anxious to save their own lives, they made a clean breast of it. Pothook had overheard Peel describe his doings to Jimmy—one of the head-station blacks. There were three or four others principally concerned, whose names were given. They waylaid their victims, sometimes spearing them from behind trees; at others accosting, and, after throwing them off their guard, striking them down unawares. Altogether Pothook knew of five or six thus killed. The bird-skin collector had met Peel when the latter was apparently alone, and had spoken to him. The two were walking along together, when the black made a sudden snatch at the gun the man carried, but he failed to obtain it, and took to his heels. Unfortunately, the white man, instead of letting the fellow go, and keeping his gun charged, fired the only barrel he had loaded at him as he ran away, wounding him slightly in the shoulder and arm. The other barrel was empty, he having shortly before discharged the shot it contained at a bird; and this Peel and his companions, who were lurking near, well knew. In an instant he was surrounded, and a volley of spears thrown at him, and he fell, pierced through and through.
Cupidity and revenge were the motives for these murders. Almost every man killed had a supply of tobacco; many had tea and sugar; and all had blankets. To them such spoil was of great value; but revenge, and the improbability of being found out, were doubtless inducements, for the class of men who wander about the interior from station to station are known to none: going nowhere in particular, but looking for employment as shepherds or hut-keepers, and heading in the direction of the districts where they are informed it can be obtained. Merely making this the pretext for lounging from one out-station to another, until shearing-time came on, they could earn money enough to indulge in their usual debauchery at that season, and were often marked as victims. Such men might disappear from the earth in numbers, and never be missed.
The lads seemed to have told all they knew, but Stevenson, to try them, pretended they had not done so.
''Pose you no tell what all about black fellow do,—eberyting,—mine hang you! You tell all.'
Thus urged, they informed us of the slaughter of another cow, killed the previous day (a thing we were as yet ignorant of). This was a great crime to any settler, and Stevenson threatened them severely if they kept anything back which they knew about destruction of sheep or cattle on the run; and they then confessed to several misdemeanours of that kind, though on a small scale, during the time he had been on the station.
In his anxiety to save himself, and tell 'eberyting what all about black fellow do,' Pothook confessed every piece of petty roguery his tribe had been guilty of for a long time past. It was now that we learned that, on two occasions when the slip panel of the paddock had been left down, and the horses all escaped into the bush—by the carelessness of some passing traveller, as we supposed—it was one of the blacks who had played the trick, and who had been rewarded with two sticks of tobacco for speedily finding and bringing them back. Percussion caps had been stolen, tobacco lying about the hut purloined, and even charges of powder taken from the flasks when our backs were turned. But, above all, it was a black fellow's dog which had killed the cat, which, on account of the snakes infesting the neighbourhood of the huts, the superintendent had taken such trouble and pains to procure, riding forty miles with it in a basket strapped behind him, and the unaccountable loss of which had much surprised and vexed him, for it had disappeared the day after its arrival.
'Whose dingo killed my cat, Pothook?' asked the superintendent.
Pothook rolled his eye towards young Toby, who hung his head with a guilty look.
'So, you scoundrel! that was the way the Colonel went, was it? And you pretended to hunt for it so diligently that I gave you your dinner and a stick of tobacco. If ever I see you or your dog after this within a mile of the head station, I'll take the stock-whip and make it a caution to the pair of you. What did you do with the body? Where put um pussy?'
No answer from the criminal; but Pothook, anxious to curry favour at everybody else's expense, informed us, 'Him yeat um.'
'Ate him?'
'Yes; him tink that one very good, white fellov 'possum.'
And Pothook furthermore let out that, under a somewhat similar delusion respecting a bottle of cold-drawn castor oil, from which he had one day seen young Harris draw the cork and swallow a glass, said little Toby had, at a moment when the hut was empty, slipped in, and, seizing the bottle as it stood on the shelf, hastily gulped down a goodly portion, under the impression that it was something of an intoxicating nature.
I observed that Pothook, in his narrative of delinquencies, did not mention any of his own exploits. This excessive modesty seemed quite misplaced to his companion, whose evil deeds he was bringing to light; and, plucking up a spirit, Toby junior retorted,—
'Mitta Tiffyson' (I may here observe that the superintendent's name was a great trial for most of the blacks. Almost every one of them had a method of his own of surmounting the difficulty. Some called him 'Mr. Stiffison,' others went further, and called him 'Stiffunson;' but plain 'Stiffuns,' with a splutter at the end, was the favourite pronunciation. I have, however, heard him called 'Stubbomson'),—'Mitta Tiffyson,' said young Toby eagerly, looking up at the superintendent, and pointing at Pothook as he spoke, 'this one marn (take) um fiz-fiz belongin' to flour.'
'Fiz-fiz for flour!' I said; 'what is that?'
'Oh, he means yeast!' said Stevenson.
'Yes, yist,' said little Toby; 'porter belongin' to bread. Pothook steal um that one.'
'Since you have been here,' said Stevenson to me, 'we have had yeast bread instead of damper. Mrs. Laidlaw got some from the publican's wife across the river. I remember her telling me that she had most unaccountably lost a quart bottle of it; she thought somebody had emptied it out in mistake. So Pothook take it, Toby?'
'Yes; him drink it all. Greedy fellow that one! no gib me any. Him tink it very good porter,' added the black, with a grin at the recollection. And upon further inquiry it was elicited that, having observed the woman place it on the table on her return home, and concluding it to be porter, Pothook had abstracted it, for he had often longed to taste that liquor. It would have been better for him if had shared the responsibility, as Toby junior proposed, and given him half, for the result was more than he could well bear.
Finding that the two had no more to tell, the superintendent informed them that their lives were spared for the present, but if they attempted to leave the hut they would be shot down. And in this Stevenson was quite in earnest, for after such a confession it was his duty to convey immediate information to the commander of the Border Black Police, the 'Black Troopers,' who were travelling down the river, and who, he had heard, would arrive at a station twenty miles off that evening. He resolved to start at once, and endeavour to return with them at daybreak, before the blacks, who might think themselves perfectly safe for that night, would suspect their vicinity and take to the scrub.
'It will be useless my starting to fetch the police if either of those two fellows escape out of your sight; and they are slippery as eels. Do you think you will be able to keep them safely?' said Stevenson to us.
I was very tired, and so was Harris; and the idea of sitting up all night was not pleasant. However, there was no help for it, and we promised to watch alternately during his absence. 'Where do you expect to find the troopers?' I asked; 'and how will you get to them?' I said.
'That is the question,' replied the superintendent. 'Lieutenant Walters, I heard, was to reach the Junction, twenty miles up on this side of the river, at sunset to-day; but the blacks are camped not far from the road I must go by, as it is too dark to travel through the bush. I must therefore cross the river here and go up by the other side, and then swim the river again—not a pleasant prospect truly. If I attempt to cross on horseback here, at the punt, the blacks there will instantly suspect the truth; so swim it I must, somewhere in our neighbourhood. Nice, isn't it?'
Finally it was decided that he should cross just below the island, carrying his clothes in a bundle, wrapped in a waterproof coat and placed in a bucket, which he held as he swam. He would then walk to the inn, taking care to approach it from behind, so that the blacks there, who, warned by Harris, had left their fires and were squatted in the verandah, should not hear him. A hundred yards behind the inn was the hut where the punt-man lived. He was to be roused and sent to the house, to tell the innkeeper to quietly saddle his mare, which was kept stabled at night, and bring her to Stevenson, while the man engaged the blacks in talk in the front of the house.
We watched until he had safely swam across and ascended the bank on the other side, and then returned to the hut. As we passed by the kitchen we looked in. Laidlaw, the hut-keeper, was sitting by the fire, and, to do him justice, seemed heartily ashamed of himself, for he did not turn his head as we appeared. His wife had made up a sleeping-place for the poor child whose parents had been so suddenly cut off. The poor thing was overcome by drowsiness, and every now and then would sink into sleep, from which, however, it would almost instantly spring up, screaming out violently that the blacks were coming to kill it, and clinging in the utmost terror to the woman's gown. It had found its way to the bodies of its mother and father behind the hut, and in its endeavours to arouse and awaken them had got covered with blood, which the woman was washing off as we entered, her tears falling plentifully the while; for she was much attached to the two lubras—who helped her in such household work as peeling potatoes, washing dishes, and bringing water, and the like, while their husbands caught fish or (before I came) shot wildfowl with the superintendent's fowling-piece. She was therefore much shocked at what had occurred, and was, moreover, heartily ashamed of her husband's pusillanimity.
We re-entered our hut, thinking that our adventures for that night at least were over—but I was mistaken.
It had been agreed that Harris and I should start an hour before daybreak and ride to a spot fixed upon, there to await the arrival of the superintendent with the troopers; and, having arranged that each of us should take a watch, I threw myself on one of the beds, and slept till two o'clock, when Harris woke me, and I took his place.
For some time I sat by the fire, musing over the different events which had occurred, and in imagination following the superintendent in his night ride up the river. It was about eleven o'clock when he started; and, allowing him an hour to reach the inn and get mounted, he would then have a straight gallop across a large bend of the river for about fifteen miles. He would then have to tether his horse and again swim the stream, as there were no other means of crossing at that spot, and walk a mile through the bush to the station where the troopers were. Allowing him till three o'clock to do this, he would have time to start with them on their errand, and be at the rendezvous fixed on before daybreak, always supposing no accident delayed him. Bobby Peel, we knew, would head for Winyong directly; but both he and the other murderers would certainly calculate upon having at least twenty-four hours undisturbed wherein to escape, during which they would be comparatively safe from the white man's vengeance.
I put some fresh logs on the fire, for the nights were now becoming very cold. The two blacks were lying sprawling by its side on the earthen floor of the hut; while Harris lay just above them on the bed next the chimney. The blaze from the burning wood and the light from the lamp fell strongly on the three sleepers, fully revealing their faces and figures, and I could not help being struck by the different aspect of the physiognomies before me, illustrations as they were of the highest and almost the lowest types of the animal man. For some time my mind wandered in a maze of theories as to the origin of types—effects of climate, food, and other modifying agencies in influencing the development of the genus homo, until all at once I became conscious that my ethnological speculations were rapidly coveying me into the land of dreams; so, jumping up to shake off the drowsiness creeping over me (for I had been shooting all day in the reed-beds), I slung the kettle, to make myself a pot of tea, and then went outside to look at the night.
The heavens were overcast with dense masses of clouds, and a light breeze blew from the southward, the damp feel of which indicated that the long-expected winter rains would not much longer be withheld from the parched-up country. After pacing up and down in front of the hut for some time, I turned to re-enter it, when all at once I heard one of the horses in the paddock neigh. Under ordinary circumstances this of itself would have signified nothing; but we were obliged to be constantly on the alert against the horse thieves, who often cleared out all the animals on several stations in a single night, and swept away with them over the borders and into the neighbouring colonies by routes known only to themselves, and where pursuit was in general utterly vain. As we had several valuable horses in our lot, I listened for some time, and, after giving a look at my charge, and ascertaining that both still slept soundly, I walked down to where they were grazing.
The paddock extended for nearly a mile up and down the river, and our huts were situated inside its fence and about in the centre. I found most of the animals a few hundred yards off, grazing quietly enough; but as I stood near one of them again neighed, and upon putting my ear to the ground I thought I heard a distant sound, which seemed to come from across the river. I went down to the bank and again listened. Sometimes it would die away, but presently it arose more strongly, until I plainly made it out to be the rushing gallop of either horses or cattle, my bush experience being then too slight to enable me to distinguish which. I concluded it must be the latter, as the sounds came from the island, which was some miles in length, being a broad, rolling plain, everywhere surrounded by deep water, and occupied exclusively by cattle, which, as they could not escape, had no one to look after them. It was not possible that any horsemen could be there by accident; for even our own stockman had to swim his horse over when Stevenson wished to muster the herd. Perhaps (I thought) the blacks who had made that night's murderous onslaught were still there, and the cattle on the island had been startled by them; for cattle have the greatest aversion to blacks, scenting them at a great distance and fleeing from their vicinity. Sometimes they will rush at the natives, charging them with great fury. Poor Leichardt relates, in the account of his most wonderful journey from Brisbane to Port Essington, that, having killed and eaten all their cattle but one, a bullock named Redman, to which they had become much attached for his patience and docility, the party was reduced to the very verge of starvation. For weeks they lived on boiled hide alone, and a very scanty allowance of that. Still, none could endure the thought of killing the faithful Redman, who had travelled with them for fifteen months through the wilderness, led by a rope passed through a ring in his nose. And the party did succeed in taking the animal into their destination, though at the cost of great suffering to themselves. In the last month or two of their journey, the explorers fell in with numerous tribes of blacks, who treated the white men with great kindness. Some of these tribes numbered five or six hundred souls. Whenever Redman, however, caught sight of them, it was with the utmost difficulty that he could be restrained. He would break away from his leader and charge the blacks with the utmost fury. 'Had the natives been hostile,' says Leichardt, 'Redman would have protected us and routed them all. I have seen three hundred men flee from his rush, for they were terribly afraid of him.'
All at once the sounds ceased, and for some minutes I heard nothing; but as my eye wandered over the river banks, suddenly I caught sight of objects moving on the island, and a short inspection convinced me that they were horses, and I fancied that they were mounted. I crouched down, to avoid being seen, but of that there was not much fear, as the shade of the rising ground behind me effectually concealed me. It was now darker than in the earlier part of the night, and the river was a hundred yards across, so that it was only when they passed along the summit of the bank and against the lighter background of the sky that I could distinguish them. They stopped opposite where I was, and at the only spot for many miles (except at the punt) where animals could descend and ascend to and from the water, the banks of the Murray being exceedingly precipitous. By this I felt convinced they were horse-stealers, and men, moreover, well acquainted with the locality, for they could not have passed down the river behind the inn, because the scrub, impenetrable at night, approached so close to the house that it would necessitate their passing within earshot. Higher up the river they could not cross without getting involved in a network of ana branches, impossible to ford in the dark. They were therefore obliged to cross at our paddock, and doubtless had the felonious intention of picking up our horses on their way.